Going by out-of-the-box playability/being a starting point and general impact on the format:
1. Commander 2014 - Daretti in particular was surprisingly strong straight from the box.
2. Commander 2015 - The easy mana base and decent generals helped, no complaints here.
3. Commander 2016 - Well designed, but some of the legends are OP and 4-colour-manabase is very hard to pull off.
4. Commander 2017 - The manabases are horrendous (Dragon in particular) but at least they do provide plenty of tribal basics to work with. Odd that there's no Coat of Arms or anything alike that in there though.
5. Commander 2013 - The decks had no good focus, but at least they did try to go into certain directions. The generals however...yuch.
6. Commander 2011 - While far from a bad product, it was quite clear WOTC had no real idea about Commander yet at this point.
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My Commander decks:
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras.
Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power.
Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza.
Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall.
Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana.
Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die.
Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
1. 2013 - Pushed the format to its currently growing popularity. They might not be the best decks, but they have flair, and that attracts people.
2. 2014 - Pushed the format even further
3. 2017 - They nailed the tribal theme
4. 2015 - Meren deck is amazing, simic was great, but the 3 other decks ranged from average to god awful (I got the Boros deck for $20 the weekend it was released)
5. 2016 - Group Hug deck brings this down; that deck theme makes me want to barf
6. 2011 - I appreciate the experimentation.
Commander 2016 (4 color) - When this set was announced I was really really ready to hate the product. I do in fact, really hate the 4 color legends they made as well as the idea of making 4 color decks. They did however completely take me by surprise with their Partner mechanic though and I have been and continue to be very fond of mashing different combinations of partners together. Partners took me by complete surprise and it really breathed a huge fresh breath into how you can design decks. The effects of the partners were mostly simplistic but the ability to cross them together really opened up soooooooo much deckbuilding space. I was taken by complete surprise by how refreshing this mechanic ended up being for me but somehow, it was far more interesting than most commander sets on the slots they devoted to partner alone for me.
Commander 2011 (Enemy Wedges) - Honestly, for its time the commanders were completely off the chart. I rate this one in part as highly as I do for multiple reasons but I think that while the commanders were and still are fairly powerful, Edric is really the only one that was just completely broken for the long term. They had numerous strong commanders but I didn't feel like they broke the damn game over the long haul with this product. Probably the biggest thing they did right is that most of the decks felt quite playable. We had ridiculously good reprints here outside of new cards and this is probably the biggest thing they did correctly here.
Commander 2014 (mono color) - I really did like what they did with the mono color designs. I really liked the design of a lot of the cards when it came to the new cards and ultimately the planeswalkers as commanders was something I could stomach when they were designed to be played as such. My only real qualms were more towards the fact that the blue and black decks felt like they got somewhat of bad commander options where the RWG decks at least had commanders that were worth pursuing as commanders. The design of the RW decks were probably the best in my opinion here so any qualms with this product was more that I felt the products were not as well distributed when it came to quality in the legends.
Commander 2013 (Allied Wedges) - This set for me I rate low because of two things. 1) They broke the ***** out of the game in a way that still to this day is not fun to me. The commanders they made are so off the chart rediculous when it comes to power level and they are so incredibly painful to interact with that I just completely hate this set because of the legends they made here. They pushed the envelope and they pushed it too far. 2) The decks felt like a mess. Naya felt like it had zero direction it was going. Esper felt like it couldnt ever win. Bant was mostly only powerful in its ability to somewhat control Prossh and the Jund deck was the only one that felt well designed so it was lopsided as all *****. I would talk about the Grixus deck but I just have nothing to say about it to be honest... This product goes down as a bad product for me because it was very lopsided in how good the procons were made and the level of the legends still leaves me more than a little upset today. There was also the craze for True-Name Nemesis which is something I would love to forget about. Luckily for me I found a Legacy player who was buying them like in bulk so I offered him like $10.00 for everything but True-Name and he gave it to me. The new cards and reprints were all kind of fine, my issue with this set was 95% its legends and man.... did they suck.
Commander 2015 (Enemy Two Color) - I rate this set so low because of all of the commander products, I view the legends from this set as sort of niche in what their decks can be as well as underwhelming for the majority. Meren is like probably one of the few good legends from this set and even she was kind of niche in her build. There were a few others that are ok just not that interesting and still mostly niche in what they do. Overall, I find this commander product to be the least memorable of all commander products to date. I felt that most of the legends from this set were very niche in what their deck could be so the design space for their decks felt limited.
Commander 2017 (Tribal) - I rate this set so low because it had very little money in reprints, the new cards I felt didn't benefit tribal enough, and the legends were very unsatisfying to me. They chose tribes I didn't care for and then they proceeded to make little to no new cards to benefit those tribes outside of the new legends. Between unsatisfying legendaries, unsatisfying tribe choices, unsatisfying reprints, and unsatisfying new card tribal support.... this set was my biggest let down of the commander product. I only ordered something like 5-6 new cards from this set and ZERO of them were legendary or had anything to do with the tribes they made.
2. Commander 2016 - These four colour decks blew me away. Interesting commanders, great mechanics, and options for both low and high complexity play. This release would have been my number 1, but it had two major flaws: 1) Partner legendaries were grossly underpowered (with a few exceptions, e.g. Vial Smasher the Fierce); and 2) They didn't include the Nephilim with a legendary errata. Major lost opportunity with that one.
3. Commander 2017 - Decided that 2017 had be lower on my rankings than 2016 because: 1) Not having a fifth deck was lazy; 2) There is a lot less cohesion between the mechanics of each commander in each deck (more so than previous releases); and 3) All of decks don't seem equally balanced in design.
Dragons and Wizards seem meticulously built, flavour and design wins. Cats are just a Selesnya version of Kemba, Kha Regent, with most of the same equipment as Nahiri, the Lithomancer. Not a bad deck and it has some cool new cards, but it's forgettable.
Vampires looks like they threw ideas at a dartboard to see what sticks. Feels phoned in, with uninspired and underpowered commanders compared to the other decks (Licia is another beatstick Commander, Mathas is a waste of a slot). This deck was also a wasted chance to print new (better) versions of famous vampires (e.g. Baron Sengir), or to print a card for other famous vampires (e.g. Runo Stormkirk? Anje Falkenrath?). The vampire deck was the one I was looking forward to the most, yet it was the most disappointing.
4. Commander 2013 - I remember playing these decks on release. They were alright, but the reprints in the decks were relatively lacklustre. Introduced some amazing commanders, like Derevi, Empyrial Tactician, Nekusar, the Mindrazer and Prossh, Skyraider of Kher. Just didn't have the same impact as the 2011 release had long term.
5. Commander 2015 - This was the first Commander release where I didn't buy any of the decks, and opted for singles instead. I was unimpressed by the deck themes. This is only higher than Commander 2014 because it introduced some interesting new mechanics, like myriad and experience counters.
6. Commander 2014 - There were some good cards in this set, but I never liked the idea of planeswalker commanders. Picked up Daretti, Scrap Savant because his deck was the most viable out of box.
Those are my rankings, the low point in the Commander product being 2014-2015 IMO.
Broken tier: 2013
Top tier: 2016
High tier: 2011
Mid tier: 2015
Your mileage may vary tier: 2017
These decks were so boring I almost didn't even bother to add them to my collection tier: 2014
Commander 2011 - The Original Wedges - I only build 3 color decks, so these were perfect.
Commander 2013 - The Allied Wedges - The only missing piece to the above was the other 5 decks.
Commander 2016 - I like the idea behind the set, 4 color offered a lot of options especially the "partner" mechanic.
Commander 2017 - Even though I don't like tribal because of its limits, there are some great new commanders to build decks around.
Commander 2015 - The problem with this set is that the commanders are way too dependent on the commanders being in play. The experience mechanic was a flop for me.
Commander 2014 - Mono-colored decks have limitations in general because you are beholden to a color's weaknesses, but the decks were also boring and didn't offer much.
I'm not going to rate them on how they play out of the box against each other, mainly because the only year I did that with (by buying the entire set) was 2014 and honestly, they tend to improve year by year anyway (although this year seems a small step backwards compared to last year's from only decklist observation). Reprints have some impact, but I mainly rate them by design of the new cards.
1) 2016 - Partner is probably the best mechanic to come out of any Commander set and they took full opportunity of a 4C-cycle to introduce it. Admittedly the overall power of the partners are low, but looking at the few good ones that people use, there's a lot of unexplored potential in the mechanic and I'm willing to write it off as they're not rushing to the powers for such a mechanic with potential. The 4C commanders may be narrow (although I knew Atraxa was a immediate success the moment they put Legendary Creature and proliferate on the same card) and somewhat combotastic and being the only non-partner choices makes it awkward, but if 2011 arguably did the same for the Wedge Colors (yes they had other options, but they were few and mostly outclassed, especially in Temur) and time fixed that, so I won't be too harsh on them for at least the next few years.
2) 2011 - The same way Partners and 4C opened potential doors, 2011 did it with Wedges and most importantly, the format itself back then. Time has proven that to be correct, so in a way the 2011 Commanders have grown well without being toxic to the format. While I agree that the lack of a innovative new mechanic like partner can be attributed to this being the first product of the series, I cannot use that as a excuse to have it outrank a later product in the series that did it (2016). The decks themselves were sort of bad though (I joined the format buying the Temur precon and the first thing I did was replace Trench Gorger with Kozilek, Butcher of Truth for immediate improvement...), but since I said I wasn't rating the decks themselves, it slides (and I might have a Animar bias...)
3) 2015 - These decks feel like they're the most beginner-friendly (4C is just clunky and while 3C is passable, the first two sets' decks leaves a lot to be desired) simply because they are 2-colored. It was a bit unbalanced between themselves from what I heard, but the better decks could keep up with relatively-casual-non-precon-decks without tearing new players through their mana bases and/or wallets completely. Experience was a narrow mechanic, but it's arguably the fairest "Commander advantage" mechanic they designed and they at the very least they can hypothetically work with each other (although their abilities don't gel, the potential is there solely from using the same counters).
4) 2014 - 1C may be beginner-friendly as well, but doesn't catch up as well as 2C, considering precon standards (no evidence, but I think Meren fared better out of the box against non-precon-casual-decks than Daretti out of the box). Planeswalker Commanders were a novelty I didn't mind too much because they were mono-colored (but I hope they be very careful if they ever choose to do it again) and I do appreciate it gave me a chance to make a EDH deck that has no creature cards in it (since the Commander isn't one as well).
5) 2017 - It's hard to judge something I haven't seen experienced comments on (as in people commenting after experiencing it, not experienced players in general). The colors are all-over, so as a whole I say it's slightly below 2015 in terms of beginner-friendliness (at least there's the Cat deck and I did say 3 colors aren't that bad). They'll fare better out of the box against casual-non-precons than 2014 for sure. My main gripe is with Eminence - I never liked them taking advantage of the Command Zone and using them as emblems is definitely not the way I want to see the format go, even if it's narrow this time round and doesn't affect the really competitive tribes. More on that on the next ranking, which made the same mistake. Like I said, it's hard to judge a newer product, so this might move up, but as of now it's not looking good on my rankings.
6) 2013 - The biggest mistake of the Commander series if you asked me. Emblem Commanders? Completely ignoring the Commander tax? Gaining more momentum using the Commander tax (especially in the color that can ramp)? All mistakes, by utilizing a mechanic (Commander/Zone) that is technically speaking, already a broken one kept in check by "Legendary Creatures only", Color Identity and the tax. Strong commanders (coughleovoldcough) already proved that these measures may not even enough for regularly-strong creatures, so stuff that lessened these restrains were certainly not appreciated by me. And of course, the "weakest" (and arguably fairest) of them (Jeleva) had a legacy chase-card that created a different issue... I want to say they learnt a lot since then (would have said that last year), but Eminence put some doubt on that now.
Reminder these are just my opinions, you may not necessarily agree with them, but I think it would take a lot to convince me to change my mind (2017 might still have a chance, but based on my 2013 ranking it's not looking too positive honestly).
Its really interesting that the Partners are mostly like.... universally being praised as the best thing from these products lol.
It's actually quite 'logical'.
The more colours it has, the more people like it.
The last few months on this forum I noticed that many EDH-players here are not big 'fans' of the color identity.
It seems as if people don't like the limitations of specific colours.
I personally like the weaknesses of some decks whereas other people might prefer to splash a colour and eliminate the weakness.
Commander 2016 (4 color) - When this set was announced I was really really ready to hate the product. I do in fact, really hate the 4 color legends they made as well as the idea of making 4 color decks. They did however completely take me by surprise with their Partner mechanic though and I have been and continue to be very fond of mashing different combinations of partners together. Partners took me by complete surprise and it really breathed a huge fresh breath into how you can design decks. The effects of the partners were mostly simplistic but the ability to cross them together really opened up soooooooo much deckbuilding space. I was taken by complete surprise by how refreshing this mechanic ended up being for me but somehow, it was far more interesting than most commander sets on the slots they devoted to partner alone for me.
Commander 2011 (Enemy Wedges) - Honestly, for its time the commanders were completely off the chart. I rate this one in part as highly as I do for multiple reasons but I think that while the commanders were and still are fairly powerful, Edric is really the only one that was just completely broken for the long term. They had numerous strong commanders but I didn't feel like they broke the damn game over the long haul with this product. Probably the biggest thing they did right is that most of the decks felt quite playable. We had ridiculously good reprints here outside of new cards and this is probably the biggest thing they did correctly here.
Commander 2014 (mono color) - I really did like what they did with the mono color designs. I really liked the design of a lot of the cards when it came to the new cards and ultimately the planeswalkers as commanders was something I could stomach when they were designed to be played as such. My only real qualms were more towards the fact that the blue and black decks felt like they got somewhat of bad commander options where the RWG decks at least had commanders that were worth pursuing as commanders. The design of the RW decks were probably the best in my opinion here so any qualms with this product was more that I felt the products were not as well distributed when it came to quality in the legends.
Commander 2013 (Allied Wedges) - This set for me I rate low because of two things. 1) They broke the ***** out of the game in a way that still to this day is not fun to me. The commanders they made are so off the chart rediculous when it comes to power level and they are so incredibly painful to interact with that I just completely hate this set because of the legends they made here. They pushed the envelope and they pushed it too far. 2) The decks felt like a mess. Naya felt like it had zero direction it was going. Esper felt like it couldnt ever win. Bant was mostly only powerful in its ability to somewhat control Prossh and the Jund deck was the only one that felt well designed so it was lopsided as all *****. I would talk about the Grixus deck but I just have nothing to say about it to be honest... This product goes down as a bad product for me because it was very lopsided in how good the procons were made and the level of the legends still leaves me more than a little upset today. There was also the craze for True-Name Nemesis which is something I would love to forget about. Luckily for me I found a Legacy player who was buying them like in bulk so I offered him like $10.00 for everything but True-Name and he gave it to me. The new cards and reprints were all kind of fine, my issue with this set was 95% its legends and man.... did they suck.
Commander 2015 (Enemy Two Color) - I rate this set so low because of all of the commander products, I view the legends from this set as sort of niche in what their decks can be as well as underwhelming for the majority. Meren is like probably one of the few good legends from this set and even she was kind of niche in her build. There were a few others that are ok just not that interesting and still mostly niche in what they do. Overall, I find this commander product to be the least memorable of all commander products to date. I felt that most of the legends from this set were very niche in what their deck could be so the design space for their decks felt limited.
Commander 2017 (Tribal) - I rate this set so low because it had very little money in reprints, the new cards I felt didn't benefit tribal enough, and the legends were very unsatisfying to me. They chose tribes I didn't care for and then they proceeded to make little to no new cards to benefit those tribes outside of the new legends. Between unsatisfying legendaries, unsatisfying tribe choices, unsatisfying reprints, and unsatisfying new card tribal support.... this set was my biggest let down of the commander product. I only ordered something like 5-6 new cards from this set and ZERO of them were legendary or had anything to do with the tribes they made.
i like you, lets mate.
...i mean uh, i agree with every single one of your points completely and rank the decks exactly the same with the exact same rationale for each.
1. Commander 2011 - Without this going well, Commander would still be a niche community, rather than the powerhouse it is today. Almost all the commanders introduced were well-balanced and not too powerful (with the exception of Ms. Spew DragonAngelDemon perhaps.) My main is still Ghave. So I'm a bit biased here.
2. Commander 2016 - The idea of partner was an amazing one, and besides making the UG ones the most powerful (seriously WotC? You can give other colors love), it went off well with each deck having an interesting theme.
3. Commander 2014 - Having walkers as your commander is something that was done before this as a house rule, and I think it was refreshing to see WotC try this direction. As well, they had some fun flavorful cards and decks. Daretti was a home run.
4. Commander 2015 - This set did a good job of really getting to the core of what each 2 color combo does. If you wanted to spellsling, then Mizzix fit that to a tee. Wanted to know what GB was about? Playing in the graveyard mostly, and Meren encapsulated that well with sacrifice and regrowing your creatures from the yard.
5. Commander 2017 - For someone who loves tribal, these decks just didn't do it for me. I might pick up the Fiend Seeker, but apart from that, these decks didn't really stretch at all. The most interesting one is the cats, as they played in some interesting design space (a legendary and his equipment, the stalking leonin card), but cats was the tribe I was least interested in, plus a lot of people are annoyed it wasn't Naya colors. This is the first set to come out where I wasn't dead-set on getting at least one card, much less a few.
6. Commander 2013 - Here's where WotC went too far out of the box. Having abilities that work in the Command Zone isn't necessarily horrible (I think they did it right with Eminence in 2017), but abilities that strong for free was just barohken. Obviously, the worst transgression was Derevi, who completely defeated the purpose of the Commander tax and is probably one of the worst-designed cards for Commander that has ever been created, in my opinion. It seems they learned their lesson, at least.
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For example
1. Commander 2016 (Four-color)
2. Commander 2011 (Original 3-color)
3. Commander 2015 (Experience Counters)
4. Commander 2017 (Tribal)
5. Commander 2014 (Planeswalkers)
6. Commander 2013 (2nd 3-colors)
Feel free to rank your top pre-con decks as well!!
1. Commander 2015 (Experience Counters)
2. Commander 2016 (Four-color)
3. Commander 2011 (Original 3-color)
4. Commander 2013 (2nd 3-colors)
5. Commander 2017 (Tribal)
6. Commander 2014 (Planeswalkers)
1. Commander 2015 (Experience Counters)
2. Commander 2013 (2nd 3-colors)
3. Commander 2011 (Original 3-color)
4. Commander 2017 (Tribal)
5. Commander 2016 (Four-color)
6. Commander 2014 (Planeswalkers)
Even with my love of mono color decks, I agree with others that the planeswalker decks were probably the weakest in terms of excitement for me
U Azami, Lady of Scrolls - Knowledge is Power U [Primer]
R Heartless Hidetsugu - The Art of Ending Games R
GB Ishkanah, Grafwidow - The Cluster HungersBG
1. Commander 2014 - Daretti in particular was surprisingly strong straight from the box.
2. Commander 2015 - The easy mana base and decent generals helped, no complaints here.
3. Commander 2016 - Well designed, but some of the legends are OP and 4-colour-manabase is very hard to pull off.
4. Commander 2017 - The manabases are horrendous (Dragon in particular) but at least they do provide plenty of tribal basics to work with. Odd that there's no Coat of Arms or anything alike that in there though.
5. Commander 2013 - The decks had no good focus, but at least they did try to go into certain directions. The generals however...yuch.
6. Commander 2011 - While far from a bad product, it was quite clear WOTC had no real idea about Commander yet at this point.
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras.
Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power.
Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza.
Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall.
Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana.
Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die.
Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
2. 2014 - Pushed the format even further
3. 2017 - They nailed the tribal theme
4. 2015 - Meren deck is amazing, simic was great, but the 3 other decks ranged from average to god awful (I got the Boros deck for $20 the weekend it was released)
5. 2016 - Group Hug deck brings this down; that deck theme makes me want to barf
6. 2011 - I appreciate the experimentation.
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[Modern] Allies
2. Commander 2016 - These four colour decks blew me away. Interesting commanders, great mechanics, and options for both low and high complexity play. This release would have been my number 1, but it had two major flaws: 1) Partner legendaries were grossly underpowered (with a few exceptions, e.g. Vial Smasher the Fierce); and 2) They didn't include the Nephilim with a legendary errata. Major lost opportunity with that one.
3. Commander 2017 - Decided that 2017 had be lower on my rankings than 2016 because: 1) Not having a fifth deck was lazy; 2) There is a lot less cohesion between the mechanics of each commander in each deck (more so than previous releases); and 3) All of decks don't seem equally balanced in design.
Dragons and Wizards seem meticulously built, flavour and design wins. Cats are just a Selesnya version of Kemba, Kha Regent, with most of the same equipment as Nahiri, the Lithomancer. Not a bad deck and it has some cool new cards, but it's forgettable.
Vampires looks like they threw ideas at a dartboard to see what sticks. Feels phoned in, with uninspired and underpowered commanders compared to the other decks (Licia is another beatstick Commander, Mathas is a waste of a slot). This deck was also a wasted chance to print new (better) versions of famous vampires (e.g. Baron Sengir), or to print a card for other famous vampires (e.g. Runo Stormkirk? Anje Falkenrath?). The vampire deck was the one I was looking forward to the most, yet it was the most disappointing.
4. Commander 2013 - I remember playing these decks on release. They were alright, but the reprints in the decks were relatively lacklustre. Introduced some amazing commanders, like Derevi, Empyrial Tactician, Nekusar, the Mindrazer and Prossh, Skyraider of Kher. Just didn't have the same impact as the 2011 release had long term.
5. Commander 2015 - This was the first Commander release where I didn't buy any of the decks, and opted for singles instead. I was unimpressed by the deck themes. This is only higher than Commander 2014 because it introduced some interesting new mechanics, like myriad and experience counters.
6. Commander 2014 - There were some good cards in this set, but I never liked the idea of planeswalker commanders. Picked up Daretti, Scrap Savant because his deck was the most viable out of box.
Those are my rankings, the low point in the Commander product being 2014-2015 IMO.
Top tier: 2016
High tier: 2011
Mid tier: 2015
Your mileage may vary tier: 2017
These decks were so boring I almost didn't even bother to add them to my collection tier: 2014
Commander 2013 - The Allied Wedges - The only missing piece to the above was the other 5 decks.
Commander 2016 - I like the idea behind the set, 4 color offered a lot of options especially the "partner" mechanic.
Commander 2017 - Even though I don't like tribal because of its limits, there are some great new commanders to build decks around.
Commander 2015 - The problem with this set is that the commanders are way too dependent on the commanders being in play. The experience mechanic was a flop for me.
Commander 2014 - Mono-colored decks have limitations in general because you are beholden to a color's weaknesses, but the decks were also boring and didn't offer much.
1) 2016 - Partner is probably the best mechanic to come out of any Commander set and they took full opportunity of a 4C-cycle to introduce it. Admittedly the overall power of the partners are low, but looking at the few good ones that people use, there's a lot of unexplored potential in the mechanic and I'm willing to write it off as they're not rushing to the powers for such a mechanic with potential. The 4C commanders may be narrow (although I knew Atraxa was a immediate success the moment they put Legendary Creature and proliferate on the same card) and somewhat combotastic and being the only non-partner choices makes it awkward, but if 2011 arguably did the same for the Wedge Colors (yes they had other options, but they were few and mostly outclassed, especially in Temur) and time fixed that, so I won't be too harsh on them for at least the next few years.
2) 2011 - The same way Partners and 4C opened potential doors, 2011 did it with Wedges and most importantly, the format itself back then. Time has proven that to be correct, so in a way the 2011 Commanders have grown well without being toxic to the format. While I agree that the lack of a innovative new mechanic like partner can be attributed to this being the first product of the series, I cannot use that as a excuse to have it outrank a later product in the series that did it (2016). The decks themselves were sort of bad though (I joined the format buying the Temur precon and the first thing I did was replace Trench Gorger with Kozilek, Butcher of Truth for immediate improvement...), but since I said I wasn't rating the decks themselves, it slides (and I might have a Animar bias...)
3) 2015 - These decks feel like they're the most beginner-friendly (4C is just clunky and while 3C is passable, the first two sets' decks leaves a lot to be desired) simply because they are 2-colored. It was a bit unbalanced between themselves from what I heard, but the better decks could keep up with relatively-casual-non-precon-decks without tearing new players through their mana bases and/or wallets completely. Experience was a narrow mechanic, but it's arguably the fairest "Commander advantage" mechanic they designed and they at the very least they can hypothetically work with each other (although their abilities don't gel, the potential is there solely from using the same counters).
4) 2014 - 1C may be beginner-friendly as well, but doesn't catch up as well as 2C, considering precon standards (no evidence, but I think Meren fared better out of the box against non-precon-casual-decks than Daretti out of the box). Planeswalker Commanders were a novelty I didn't mind too much because they were mono-colored (but I hope they be very careful if they ever choose to do it again) and I do appreciate it gave me a chance to make a EDH deck that has no creature cards in it (since the Commander isn't one as well).
5) 2017 - It's hard to judge something I haven't seen experienced comments on (as in people commenting after experiencing it, not experienced players in general). The colors are all-over, so as a whole I say it's slightly below 2015 in terms of beginner-friendliness (at least there's the Cat deck and I did say 3 colors aren't that bad). They'll fare better out of the box against casual-non-precons than 2014 for sure. My main gripe is with Eminence - I never liked them taking advantage of the Command Zone and using them as emblems is definitely not the way I want to see the format go, even if it's narrow this time round and doesn't affect the really competitive tribes. More on that on the next ranking, which made the same mistake. Like I said, it's hard to judge a newer product, so this might move up, but as of now it's not looking good on my rankings.
6) 2013 - The biggest mistake of the Commander series if you asked me. Emblem Commanders? Completely ignoring the Commander tax? Gaining more momentum using the Commander tax (especially in the color that can ramp)? All mistakes, by utilizing a mechanic (Commander/Zone) that is technically speaking, already a broken one kept in check by "Legendary Creatures only", Color Identity and the tax. Strong commanders (coughleovoldcough) already proved that these measures may not even enough for regularly-strong creatures, so stuff that lessened these restrains were certainly not appreciated by me. And of course, the "weakest" (and arguably fairest) of them (Jeleva) had a legacy chase-card that created a different issue... I want to say they learnt a lot since then (would have said that last year), but Eminence put some doubt on that now.
Reminder these are just my opinions, you may not necessarily agree with them, but I think it would take a lot to convince me to change my mind (2017 might still have a chance, but based on my 2013 ranking it's not looking too positive honestly).
EDIT: Text Fixing
Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies
It's actually quite 'logical'.
The more colours it has, the more people like it.
The last few months on this forum I noticed that many EDH-players here are not big 'fans' of the color identity.
It seems as if people don't like the limitations of specific colours.
I personally like the weaknesses of some decks whereas other people might prefer to splash a colour and eliminate the weakness.
i like you, lets mate.
...i mean uh, i agree with every single one of your points completely and rank the decks exactly the same with the exact same rationale for each.
2. Commander 2016 - The idea of partner was an amazing one, and besides making the UG ones the most powerful (seriously WotC? You can give other colors love), it went off well with each deck having an interesting theme.
3. Commander 2014 - Having walkers as your commander is something that was done before this as a house rule, and I think it was refreshing to see WotC try this direction. As well, they had some fun flavorful cards and decks. Daretti was a home run.
4. Commander 2015 - This set did a good job of really getting to the core of what each 2 color combo does. If you wanted to spellsling, then Mizzix fit that to a tee. Wanted to know what GB was about? Playing in the graveyard mostly, and Meren encapsulated that well with sacrifice and regrowing your creatures from the yard.
5. Commander 2017 - For someone who loves tribal, these decks just didn't do it for me. I might pick up the Fiend Seeker, but apart from that, these decks didn't really stretch at all. The most interesting one is the cats, as they played in some interesting design space (a legendary and his equipment, the stalking leonin card), but cats was the tribe I was least interested in, plus a lot of people are annoyed it wasn't Naya colors. This is the first set to come out where I wasn't dead-set on getting at least one card, much less a few.
6. Commander 2013 - Here's where WotC went too far out of the box. Having abilities that work in the Command Zone isn't necessarily horrible (I think they did it right with Eminence in 2017), but abilities that strong for free was just barohken. Obviously, the worst transgression was Derevi, who completely defeated the purpose of the Commander tax and is probably one of the worst-designed cards for Commander that has ever been created, in my opinion. It seems they learned their lesson, at least.
Club Flamingo Wins: 1!